Sharks lockout price tag: Tough tally for San Jose

Finally. After months of back-and-forth about salary caps and revenue sharing, National Hockey League team owners and players have come to an agreement to end professional hockey’s third lockout in a decade.

Scheduled NHL games through Jan. 14 — half of regular season games — and the league’s all star game already had been canceled before the last-minute labor agreement was announced Jan. 6.

Details are still being hammered out, but it looks likely that the Sharks will begin their team training camp in the next week and play their first game of the season after Jan. 19.

When the revamped game schedule is released, expect 48 games instead of the usual 82 games.

Despite the shorter season, San Jose businesses and the city look likely to avoid some of the pain that a fully missed season would have carried.

One local business, Amici’s East Coast Pizzeria, has missed the crowds that hockey games can provide, bumping revenue on a good average weekday night — about $5,000 — closer to $9,000, said Amici’s Director of Marketing Richard Allum.

Employees of local businesses were also hit by the lockout. Amici’s President Peter Cooperstein said his employees worked fewer hours and saw income drop, since tips declined along with customer volume.

Piling on the bad news, the city of San Jose also lost parking and sales tax revenue generated by Sharks home games.